


Do Not Disturb

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2058324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WAKE THE COURIER.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Disturb

She’d told me not to wake her once before. It was after a tough fight with a splinter gang of Fiends, and one had clipped her in the stomach with a ripper. I bandaged her up fine, but it was  pretty nasty job. She still has the scar. Anyway, she told me just to let her sleep it off, and she’d be fine. Twelve hours later, give or take, and we were on our way with minimal difficulty. Six heals like a ghoul in radiation, I swear.

Her sleep schedule has always been pretty wacky. She only travels at night so she doesn’t get heatstroke or sunburn (which I can get behind), but never checks the clock if the sun doesn’t remind her. So, big, enclosed spaces to explore and loot- like caves, or office buildings, or the worst of it, vaults, can mean days without sleep. You get used to it. Sort of.

We left for Vault 22 at sunset, and finally got out at dusk two, three days later, I can’t be sure. Well, dusk is prime traveling time for Courier Six, so we started straight for Quarry Junction by way of Goodsprings for a resupply and social check-in (she owes her life to those yokels, you know). It was dark when we arrived at Sloan, and we argued over whether to clear the deathclaws then, or wait until after a good night’s sleep, and we argued over the related question to take a stealth boy and a copious amount of her C-4 to the nest and run, or snipe from the ridge and mining equipment. Eventually, she acquiesced to crash in Chomps Lewis’s spare room and figure it out in the morning.

Morning come, I found out she didn’t. Lewis clued me in that about an hour after I went to bed, our favourite courier headed for the quarry. By the time I got up, she had cleared it, collected the reward, fixed their generator, splinted the pet mole rat’s leg, met with a group of Khans (and spoken to Chomps about it, but he was evasive on that subject), learned how to make a deathclaw omelette, and was probably halfway to Primm. I could have caught up to her. Or, I could have the nice breakfast Jas Wilkins was offering, and wait indoors until the world’s most efficient courier came back for me. Guess what I did.

When she finally got back, late afternoon, she wasn’t alone. “This is ED-E!” she said, holding the hunk of scrap metal I thought I had gotten away from under her arm. “Isn’t he cute?”

I put on my most obviously sarcastic smile. “A _dora_ ble.”

“Oh, you hush. Nash said I could have him, and I finally got all the parts to fix the little guy!” She tossed it, letting the jet propulsion kick in to hover just behind her. “Let’s go. We’ve got to get these notes to Dr. Hildern.”

The way to McCarran was hell on my knees, and even worse on my continence, but we got there, deathclaws and Fiends be damned. She spent, I don’t know, at least three hours just shooting the breeze with First Recon. After the notes were delivered, we went over to Doctor Usanagi’s clinic where she got one of those implants done, over to put down an especially unpleasant Fiend, back to McCarran, a supply run to the Gun Runners and Mick and Ralph’s, traded a few scavenged bottles of liquor to the Garrets, and _finally_ , we got back to the Strip.

I’m thinking, thank God, we’re turning in for the night. Of course not. This is Courier Six, master of harnessing the metabolic benefits of critical sleep deprivation. We deliver pictures to the sign maker, and she has a long, flirtatious exchange with the Tops doorman that I didn’t hear much of for all my yawning, and then we woke that nice Sarah at Vault 21 to hand her a few vault suits, and in the middle of an apparently _riveting_ conversation (going by Six’s body language), she tells me to head back to the Lucky 38.

I don’t know why she couldn’t have said that a few hours ago, but really, I was too tired to care.

I woke up refreshed and went about my morning routine while the Courier went about hers, (both of which mostly consist of exfoliating the grime off, let’s be honest). I’m ready for another day of Wasteland-walking, and she’s ready for a nap. About damn time, you ask me.

I piddle the day away, and come dusk- she’s still asleep. Okay, she was up for a while, I’ll give her a good twelve hours, right? Twelve hours passes. So does fourteen. And sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty. I’m starting to worry, because the only time I’ve seen anyone sleep that long, we had to put him out of his vegetable misery. She’d been out for twenty-one by the time I voiced these concerns to Veronica, Cass, and Raul (I don’t need medical expertise from a supermutant, thanks). They aren’t concerned, but they’re not doctors, so why do I care about their opinions, anyway? It’s another hour before I decide to wake her, and another half before I get up the courage to do it. So, I enter the lair of the beast- Courier Six’s bedroom.

The eyebot’s floating beside her bed, which I find vaguely creepy, but whatever, and she’s sprawled facedown on top of the covers in a puddle of her own drool, so that’s all normal.

I should point out that Six’s internal alarm clock works in perfect hour increments, so _she’s_ always been the one to wake _me_. I have no idea how I’m going to go about rousing her. Well, her name’s a good place to start, right? I try that a few times, nothing, so I bounce the bed a little. She snorts her own saliva (attractive, right?) and stays soundly asleep. I’m down to one option here, and that is to physically wake her- which I’ve been avoiding, because she’s liable to hit me before she realizes I’m not a raider, or what have you.

I give her a couple quick taps on the shoulder: nothing. Again, harder, still nadda. So I’m outright shaking her, she’s completely unresponsive, and I’m freaking out because I’m afraid the brain injury finally caught up with her, and my best friend’s a vegetable. Out of nowhere, she grabs my arm, throws me to the floor, and jumps on top of me- and this is when I realized she sleeps with that 9mm, because it’s pressed to my forehead.

Oh, that’s not even the worst part! See, I didn’t know this until later, but she’s not actually awake yet, so her eyes are open, but they’re rolled back in her head, there’s spittle dripping from her chin. I had just come from Deathclaw Central, and this is probably the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. I’m screaming, ED-E’s having a fit, and in bursts Veronica and Raul. She sees the Enclave bot neither of us have ever liked glitching out, and clocks it with her powerfist; you can hear Cass busting a gut from outside (she’s been through this before and didn’t bother to tell me, apparently), Lily’s having difficulty getting through the doorway, Raul’s yelling in Spanish (we’re just lucky he didn’t shoot anyone), and all this FINALLY wakes Six, who starts waving her gun, still half-asleep, shouting for someone to tell her what’s going on. It was a mess!

And guess what? The gun wasn’t even loaded. If someone’s expecting you to be asleep and you point a gun at them, they’re probably not going to check the chamber before they start running, and she knows it.

Needless to say, that was the last time I ever tried to wake Courier Six.


End file.
